


lord anderson's favorite incentive

by pensee



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: And getting money anyway, Bachelor Hank, Canon-level Hank sorrow and alcoholism, Connor being a lil schemer, Gavin is the worst butler, General Absurdity, Hank being a blushing tsundere, Hoping to marry for money, M/M, Marrying for love instead, Matchmaker Connor, Romance Novel AU, Switching, amanda is connor's mother, quick and silly, regency au, teensy bit of crossdressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 19:12:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19324339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensee/pseuds/pensee
Summary: Lord Henry Anderson’s father has died and left his son a debt that he cannot hope to repay unless he finds a wealthy benefactor-slash-spouse willing to share their inheritance. Connor Stern, a fellow peer with the unusual job of matchmaker, is employed to create in Lord Anderson a bachelor worthy of suitors’ attentions. Somewhat counterproductively—at least at first—the two manage to fall in love with each other instead.





	lord anderson's favorite incentive

 

As a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Royal Navy—including serving during five years of wartime—Hank had seen a lot. A lot of carnage, a lot of humor, a lot of humanity at its best, worst, and everywhere in between. But never in his time as a soldier, sailor, or as a member of the peerage had he encountered anything quite like Connor.

“This is the matchmaker. Sir,” Reed sneers, his snotty tone a constant reminder that he thought himself the master and Hank the butler, despite the conditions of reality deeming it quite the opposite. Nodding to Connor, who has apparently been sitting in Anderson Manor’s sunroom for the past quarter hour unbeknownst to Hank until Reed ambushed him on his way back from the stables a few minutes past, Reed bows with a sarcastic flourish and promptly leaves the room without even a perfunctory promise of returning should Hank need him.

Abandoning Hank alone with one of the most handsome young men he’s ever seen, currently smiling at Hank with a twinkle of glee in his eyes that does not bode well.

“Lord Anderson,” Connor says, and Hank shivers (hopefully not visibly) at the surprising warmth and depth of the boy’s voice.

Since Anderson Manor fell into heavy debt, revealed to Hank upon the death of his elderly father the season previous, Hank has been frantically borrowing and rearranging finances, letting servants go, collecting upon owed favors, and generally struggling to keep his head above water. Scowling at the reminder that his father’s last will and testament had also included a footnote outlining his hope that Hank would find it in himself to remarry after the tragic death of his family a few years before, Hank hopes to put Connor—and his father’s request—out of his mind as soon as possible.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Connor continues, just as Hank blurts out, “Who put you up to this? Was it my father’s desperate last request? Or maybe Fowler, that old bastard. I told him I’d find another way to pay him back other than _marrying into money_ , for Christ’s sake.”

“Let me start over,” Connor says, cordially, not at all like Hank had tried to bite off his head when he was only doing his _job_ as designated by whomever mystery person had assigned him to the task, because it sure as hell wasn’t as if Hank had the gall to ask for help from (or pay for) a professional matchmaker.

_Psh._

And the “professional” part of it was puzzling, now that he thought on it. The nobility that Hank knew tended to avoid participating in any long-standing work besides maintaining their parents’ estates, spending their inheritances, and doing valuable work for the military. He’d heard society rumors circulating of Connor’s success at matching the unmatchable, but it was one thing to hear it in periphery and completely another to have it show up on his front doorstep hoping to find _him_ a match.

Even despite the fact that Hank was responding from a place of surprise and being extremely rude to him. Although, last he checked, Connor actually held the higher social esteem in their current situation, as the adopted and fully recognized son of Duchess Stern, which made Hank’s common-sense scream at him to backtrack on said rudeness as quick as possible.

“You can start over all you want, I still won’t be needing your services, please and thank you. I’ll resolve my debts on my own, and erm, manage my own romantic liaisons,” Hank nonetheless grouses, throwing caution to the wind. He motions for Connor to follow him out, but Connor stops short of the doorway, putting a carefully gentle hand on his forearm.

“I know I’m not the traditional choice for the job,” Connor says, and Hank snorts. No, Connor was not a bright young lady trained for the task, shrewd young spinster, or greedy old man eager at the chance to fatten his purse whilst sampling the wares. He was a bloody peer apparently looking for something meaningful to do, which was all well and fine, but Hank would appreciate it if he did so far away from Anderson Manor.

“You’re not the traditional choice, no,” Hank scoffs.

“But I think I can help you, Lord Anderson. If you’ll let me,” Connor says, and his voice has gone soft. Entreating.

Hank realizes how close they are, and fleetingly wonders whether this boy is intentionally trying to bait him or whether he really does feel the same inexplicable spark that Hank felt when their eyes first met from across a crowded room last Midsummer’s Ball.

Cursing to himself— _why can you not resist the bloody puppy dog eyes, Anderson_ —Hank takes a deep, emotionally pained breath through his nose.

“You’ll help me find a suitable spouse. Someone with a brain, damn it. I don’t care what they look like or whether they can sing or play the harpsichord. And I wouldn’t say no to a fortune, if the opportunity bloody presented itself.”

His own pension from the navy was barely enough to keep himself afloat, much less the Manor’s remaining servants.

“Someone with a brain,” Connor smiles. “I do believe I can find one or two options that would be ‘suitable’.”

 

 

 

“I thought your job was to find me someone tolerable, not teach me how to play house,” Hank grunts, glaring at the impeccable place setting before him before Connor sweeps it all away with one elegant movement of his arm. Glasses in the wrong place, plates scattered, utensils in a heap.

“I believe the real job is finding someone to tolerate _you_ ,” Connor teases, Hank rejoining with a flushed, “ _You_ tolerate me,” before he can stop himself.

“Because I find it easy to like people. Easy to like you in particular,” Connor hums, tapping Hank on the back of the hand.

“Fix it,” he says, indicating the dishes.

From his place standing behind Hank’s chair, he has a height advantage, and Hank nearly jumps out of his skin when Connor bends down to repeat in a whisper, much closer to his ear, “Fix it, Hank.”

Hank, who had once been drilled on how to set a table by a sadistic childhood governess (despite the fact that he would likely have servants most of his life to take care of such a task when it was most important), grits his teeth and begins by stacking the smallest dish atop the others.

His governess had taught him left-to-right, but Hank felt like being facetious and working right-to-left instead.

Wine glass, water glass. Soup spoon, dessert spoon, knife, dishes, meat fork, salad fork, cocktail fork.

“Cocktail fork,” Connor whispers, and Hank swears as Connor moves it across to the other side of the plate.

“I give up,” Hank sighs, all this dealing with food-related implements genuinely having made him hungry. “I’d ring for the bloody butler but Reed’s off doing who-knows-what, who-knows-where.”

“We’ll ask the cook to make something. Or we could try a recipe together,” Connor says, absolutely serious, and Hank swallows at how radiant he looks in the midday light.

“Is the promise of food at the end of it not enough incentive, Lord Anderson?” Connor asks playfully, and the spell of the moment is broken, Hank attempting to hide his red cheeks behind an unruly curtain of hair that he should really either cut or tie back whenever he has the time to think about silly things like his appearance.

Which is naturally why Connor’s next Make-Lord-Anderson-A-More-Eligible-Bachelor goal is, of course, grooming.

 

 

 

“While that shepherd’s pie last week was one of the best I’ve had,” Hank says, leaning into the compliment while leading into the complaint. “I don’t see the incentive in this particular nightmare.”

Holding a pair of scissors far too sharp to be used for barbering (in Hank’s opinion, they’re more suited as a surgeon’s tool) and heedlessly waving them around, Connor shushes him.

“We’re not going to change anything about your overall appearance,” he says. “But you’ll look neater.”

Hank scratches at his admittedly scraggly beard as Connor combs the dampened hair at his neck, and shrugs.

“I already have a barber, I don’t need—.”

“A barber who can’t cut an even line,” Connor scoffs, the first real sound of derision Hank has ever heard from him. It’s so far removed from the usual polite, eager-to-please-everyone attitude that Hank’s mostly been faced with these past days that it actually makes him smile beneath the curtain of hair as Connor combs it down to block his eyes.

“Stay still,” Connor murmurs, and for once, Hank settles into his seat and obeys.

“I want you to be ready for Michaelmas. Kamski’s hosting a ball,” he says, conversationally, and Hank’s eyes go wide.

“That’s in two weeks,” he protests, realizing after he’s said it how he’s inadvertently insulted himself, disbelieving that Connor could whip him into shape by then.

 _Or maybe you’re just afraid_ , he thinks, in the deepest part of him that hardly ever sees the light. _Brand new person, brand new chance that you could lose it all in one fell swoop._

“I’m sure the baron’s daughters will be there. I’ve heard stories about their comeliness,” Connor continues on, not letting Hank formally refuse, and Hank sighs.

“I just want someone who’s a decent person who won’t drive me even deeper into debt. Like I said, I don’t care what they look like. God help me, I just wanna do right by my father’s last wish.”

Connor makes a soft, contemplative noise, pausing in his cutting.

“What’s wrong?” Hank asks.

“Nothing,” Connor says, as if to himself. “Just thinking about how easy it is to like you, Lord Anderson.”

And he resumes his barbering, as if with one little statement, he hasn’t started Hank’s dormant heart to beating again.

 

 

 

Despite every bone in his body telling him to be lazy in his old age, Hank does have a day job to help keep the Manor afloat, a private detective’s position at an agency that handles all sorts of cases, but particularly among the peerage. If Hank never has to see another mistress’s petticoats for the rest of his life, he will be satisfied.

 _But you can’t be much of a detective if you don’t pay attention to every detail,_ he thinks to himself, rendering his own thoughts moot when he does not even look up at the sound of Connor’s voice as the other man steps into his tiny office.

“Just take a seat wherever you want,” he says, after Connor has said a quick hello, waving in the general direction of what used to be two guest chairs before they were swallowed by piles and piles of old files.

“I thought we were going to meet at the Manor—,” he manages, choking out the last syllable as he glances up and finds Connor—is that _really_ Connor? —dressed in a woman’s gown and holding a lace parasol to shade his face coquettishly. Hank, having nearly choked on his own tongue at the sight, is not courageous enough to focus more closely for the outline of a corset beneath the already slimming silhouette provided by the dress’s bodice.

“I was curious about where you worked. Believe it or not, Mother doesn’t allow me many places outside of client homes, although I’m a full-grown man. I think she’s just protective,” Connor says, as if this is a completely normal weekday and he dresses up like this all the time.

Hank raises an eyebrow, privately contemplating. Hm. Perhaps he does.

“Is this for practice speaking to a potential spouse?” Hank rasps, because this is as close as he can get to explaining his true feelings aloud.

_Your eyes are beautiful, your face belongs in paintings. I constantly stare at the freckle near the corner of your mouth and wonder what it would be like to press my lips against it. I wouldn’t mind if you wore dresses to meet me, or the tightest breeches, or nothing at all._

“And what if it is? Do you require any further incentive than good conversation with a beautiful person, Lord Anderson?”

If Connor has a lace fan to hide behind while he talks currently concealed somewhere in that gown, Hank is going to _die_.

“No,” Hank says, marveling at how it’s the truth. “No, just this is…perfect.”

 

 

 

And then, because nothing perfect in his life can last forever, the dreams start.

 

 

 

Realistically, if Hank could convince Connor to marry him, the Stern fortune would be able to sustain Anderson Manor for centuries yet, but this is of course the last thing on Hank’s mind when he dreams of Connor Stern.

The gown and lace parasol he wore at the detective’s agency are haunting enough, but in the fuzzy moments when he wakes in the night, half-hard and with a burning heat low in his gut, Hank finds himself yearning for something different. For another warm body in his bed. For Connor’s warmth lying beside him, eyes sparkling like they had that day in the sunroom.

His hips under Hank’s palms, legs over Hank’s shoulders.

“Fuck,” Hank curses to himself, each time, and considers that about best sums it up.

 

 

 

_You can’t fall in love with the matchmaker._

_You can’t fall in lov_ —.

 

 

 

“This is only Michaelmas. Why is there mistletoe hanging up there?” Hank sputters, Fowler shrugging, “Leftover from last year. Guess the servants missed it during clean up. Perkins, come over here and give Anderson a kiss!”

Perkins, next in line for his father’s title and waiting with baited breath for his older brother to die, scowls from a nearby couch and makes a rude gesture that would make his wife balk. Hank’s had bad dealings with him before at the detective’s agency and no qualms about receiving repeat business from the other man, so he makes a rude gesture right back.

“You’re in quite a mood,” Christopher tells him, carefully avoiding the mistletoe pinned above the threshold to a second seating room and reaching into the dresser behind Hank for a deck of cards. “You do realize that all the fine ladies of society are all the way over there, not hiding in a corner with the other lords?”

Christopher having served under him in the Navy is the only reason Hank does not verbally protest and instead grimaces politely as possible.

“Hank, there you are!” a familiar voice calls, and Hank watches as Connor bows briefly while Lady Chen crosses his path, quickly making his way over to Hank in the moments after. Presumably to drag him out of the corner, per Christopher’s same perceptiveness.

In his excitement, he doesn’t notice the mistletoe now hovering over his own and Jeffrey’s head. Irritating as Fowler is, he trades places and shoves Hank into the spot of honor next to Connor, the room falling into a hush as the small crowd of guests pretends to continue chatting while side-eying Connor and Hank from behind their fans.

“Well, it’s not Christmas, old chap, but it’s bad luck not to,” Jeffrey mutters, and Hank scowls, because that _can’t_ be true.

But Connor is looking at him with a game expression on his face, and before Hank can say anything else, Connor leans up the slightest bit to kiss him…on the cheek.

“How positively adorable,” Hank hears someone say, maybe Lady Chen, and he flushes to the tips of his ears.

“It’s alright if you want to stay right here, Hank,” Connor whispers to him, once the gawking rubberneckers have dispersed to their own little dramas all about the house. “Let’s call this more practice, and I’m sure I’ll find a way to get you out of your shell by Christmas, hm?”

_Christmas is too late, Hank thinks solemnly. I’ll lose the Manor, and by that point, I’ll be drinking myself into a stupor. Thinking I deserve to be alone._

“I’ll need more than a _little_ incentive to get that done,” Hank croaks, using Connor’s own words from the weeks before, hoping he’ll catch on.

“I’ll think of something,” Connor says, and gives Hank another quick peck on the cheek.

 

 

 

Never in his wildest fantasies would Hank have considered that Connor would ever strip himself free of clothing and deposit himself in the middle of Hank’s bed to be admired. And never in his wildest nightmares would Hank have envisioned having a heart attack in the threshold of his own bedchamber at such a sight, gripping at the doorframe for balance until the wood creaked in protest.

“I, what. I sent you home. Well, I sent a carriage—your driver—home to the Stern Estate. I was sure,” he says, trying to modulate his voice so that he doesn’t sound the frightened maid. “I _thought_ I sent you home, rather.”

“And I apologized to my driver for the trouble,” Connor says, perfectly casual, as if he is not stroking a finely boned hand across his own milky-white chest— _starting without me_ , Hank’s brain unhelpfully provides—and teasing the living daylights out of Hank, whose erection has since jolted interestedly in his trousers.

“But you somehow found it pertinent to return to the Manor’s halls after I saw you out, and find your way to my bedroom nonetheless?”

“Your man Gavin was particularly amused when I crept up the stairs like a thief.”

Hank’s mouth flaps open and shut.

“Your hair’s curly,” he says, not exactly the best thing to lead into what’s supposed to be a row— _invading my privacy, wasting a Stern employee’s precious time_ —but the thing that comes to mind first.

“When I don’t smooth it down with pomade, yes,” Connor says, then, eyes demurely downcast but smirk on his face to belie his innocence, “I’ve come to discuss potential suitors, Lord Anderson. I know the location’s hardly appropriate, but I think I’ve found the incentive you’ve been looking for.”

And he moves in some languid, full body _beckon_ that Hank, for all his curmudgeonly façade, cannot resist.

After, both of them nearly dripping in sweat and other things, Connor leans over to brush a bit of hair out of his face.

“We’ll find someone for you by Christmas. I promise,” he says.

_And what if I want you?_

“I could always marry _you_ for your money,” he jokes. Poorly, judging by the look on Connor’s face. Trying to recover the moment, he adds, “Well, you’ve got a nice enough face, and that big brain that I asked for. And you know how to do a million things I’ve never had the chance to learn.”

“You shouldn’t joke about things like that, Hank,” he murmurs, a hitch in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” Hank says, but Connor’s already fleeing from bed, sheet wrapped around him, and Hank has a moment of sheer panic—he can’t run out like that, it’s freezing—before he realizes that Connor isn’t racing to the front door, he’s just found his way to the study, so he can be alone.

_Be away from you._

Considering whether or not to go after Connor, he takes the coward’s way out and rolls over in bed, hoping for the sweet oblivion of sleep. At least, for a few seconds when he rises in the morning, he’ll have forgotten about this.

And Connor will be gone.

 

 

 

“You’re not gone,” he gapes incredulously, Connor absolutely _swimming_ in one of his own dressing gowns and carrying a silver breakfast platter into the dining room when Hank finally finds it in himself to drag himself downstairs the next morning.

“I have a plan,” Connor tells him, wasting no time over porridge and eggs. “You enjoyed last night, right?”

Hank nods cautiously, as if this is a test he’s not prepared for.

“And you want to have something like that with someone in the near future, with the added benefit of access to their capitol to pay off your father’s debts.”

“I don’t know what you—Yes, Connor, you already know all of this!”

“Well, we know that my seduction techniques work. And we know that you’ve tried your best to re-learn all you can about polite society. I wasn’t going to push you, but if incentives are what you need to get what you want, we have to get you out there.”

Hank nearly rears up at the mention of _seduction techniques_ ; was that all last night was, for Connor to prove a point? They were seriously talking about Hank finding a different person to marry when the obvious answer was right in front of him?

But then Connor reaches across the table to place his smaller palm atop Hank’s, and Hank all but melts, in spite of his broken heart. If Connor wasn’t the one to say that it was more than sex, it meant he wasn’t interested.

“So, what, you’re going to sleep with me right up until the point I’m confident enough in my prowess inside and outside the bedroom to land myself the perfect mate?”

Connor looks at him for a moment, really looks, and Hank feels all the air leave the room.

“You’re a nice man who has been through so much, Hank. I just want you to be happy,” Connor says. “You’re my friend, and I want what’s best for you.”

 _That’s you_ , Hank needs to say, but instead, he just nods.

What else can you do when your _friend_ doesn’t want you back?

 

 

 

“You’re doing so well. The widow Fletcher is interested, you can tell!” Connor says, cheering him on as if he’s out hunting for ducks in the bush.

“I can’t go back out there. Those women are vapid, spoiled—.”

“They’re only spoiled because they’re rich. Nauseatingly so. They’d solve all your problems, Hank. What about the parson’s boy? He’s a bit younger than you, but he’s a popular inventor, just home from overseas. Wasn’t he nice?”

Hank groans in despair.

“I can’t do this. I need air,” he says, ripping off his cravat and fleeing to out-of-doors, where he hopes Connor will not follow.

No such luck.

“Before you say the _polite thing_ in defense of your little quest—Let me speak first for once,” Hank says, startling Connor into silence. “You’ve never told me whether it was Fowler who put you up to this or my father’s will or someone else entirely meant to torture me. I only know that I haven’t been the one to pay for your services, but you need to tell me now.

“If you’re truly my friend, tell me now who hired you. Because if it’s not my father’s dying wish, I would like to terminate your contract.”

“Hank,” Connor breathes, as if Hank has just gutted him. Perhaps, if Connor feels any fraction of what Hank feels for him, the simile would be an apt description.

“That’s answer enough for me. I would like to leave,” he whispers, so low that he’s not sure Connor has heard him until his sharp reply, “I’ll summon my driver.”

“Alone,” Hank replies, as if to himself. “I want to go alone.”

“As you wish, Lord Anderson,” he hears Connor say from behind him, in a terribly soft, impersonal voice that doesn’t sound like Connor at all.

Hank tries to turn around to stop him, but the other man has already disappeared back into the house.

 

 

 

Hank drinks and drinks until he vomits. Until a bartender who used to praise him for his service refuses to provide him another bit of alcohol and hands him a few extra coins for a carriage home.

 _That’s right_ , Hank thinks, warming the coins in his palm. _Anderson Manor could no longer afford to keep a coach, or half as many horses as his father once had._

He was going to die old, alone, and penniless, his only comfort that Cole was already in whatever better place people believed their loved ones to go, and that he would never have to shoulder his father’s debts as Hank must.

“Hank,” he hears, but it’s not Jimmy-the-bartender’s voice or Jimmy’s face hovering above him, surprisingly strong hands grabbing to steady him as he’s led out to a carriage.

He’s about to tell whoever it is to fuck off, but passes out before he gets the chance.

 

 

 

“So, you’re the one,” a woman says, then, “Oh, you’re awake. Welcome to the Stern Estate, Lord Anderson.”

Hank blinks open crusted eyes to find Duchess Stern tending to him at his bedside, replenishing a cool cloth in a basin of water, her dress high-necked and regal and made of a simple cream fabric without a single blemish.

“My Lady,” he croaks, and she shushes him.

“I would tell you to call me Amanda, but I have a feeling we’re soon to be much better acquainted. Still, if you ever worry him like that again, you and I will be having far fewer cordial words. Is that understood?”

Him.

 _Him_.

Hank’s muddled brain grasps for the name, pretending he hasn’t had a running mantra of it in his thoughts ever since that fiasco of a party where he fired her son.

“Yes, my Lady,” he manages, and the Duchess produces a glass of water from a sweating pitcher on the same bedside table.

“Rest, Henry,” she says, and too tired to argue, he does.

 

 

 

“Excessive drinking is not very becoming of an earl, Lord Anderson,” Connor tells him, Hank’s head in his lap as Connor pets his hair.

“I was young when I joined the Navy,” Hank says. “It was a good way to pass the time. A good way to forget things you didn’t want to remember.”

“I was in the service for a term myself,” Connor says, as if it were only part of a passing dream. “Perhaps that’s why Mother insists I remain close. A belated fear of losing me.”

“Didn’t know that about you. Wouldn’t have guessed it, either,” Hank says, but there were all sorts of people you could meet. Peers that were cowards and peers that were heroes. Farmer’s sons who led well enough you would follow them into hell. Criminals who were on military probation in the service and turned their lives around; others that didn’t.

Maybe his no-doubt plethora of experiences in the service was where Connor had developed an interest in helping people find their match. It was a skill, choosing two people, with all their good qualities and shortcomings alike, and making sure they fit.

“I got out because I didn’t like following all the rules,” Connor says, and Hank snorts.

“I don’t believe that for a second, my lord,” Hank murmurs, and Connor sighs, “It’s the truth.”

“If you insist,” Hank says.

“I do,” Connor smiles.

 

 

 

The physician, after recommending he drink plenty of non-alcoholic fluids to replenish those lost by the vomiting—with a look of skepticism at having been called to look at an otherwise reasonably healthy middle-aged man—recommends no strenuous activity or hard drinking for a fortnight, but Hank nonetheless finds himself once again in bed with the object of his desire, though he knows well enough now to make his point plain before going any further.

“I wasn’t jesting, about wanting to marry you when I asked in another disastrous situation not unlike this one,” he says, and Connor pauses in sucking (strategically placed, of course) love bites into his neck.

“Why would the situation be disastrous?” Connor asks, blinking innocently.

“Because you are contractually employed by someone who expects you to find a spouse for me. How will it look if you keep taking their funds and try to pass _yourself_ off as the spouse at the end of it? You’d be committing a fraud! Not to mention the fact that you are—in your own words—my _friend_ , not my romantic partner.”

“Hush, Hank,” Connor consoles, actually putting his bloody (perfect) fingers over Hank’s mouth to stall his speech. “It’s nearly Christmas. I promised to find you someone by then, and I will. The situation would only be disastrous if I went back on my word.”

“You don’t underst—,” Hank starts, but Connor whispers, _hush_ , again, and hitches one of Hank’s legs over his narrow hip.

_Oh._

“I understand everything I need to,” he says, his fingers finding a home between Hank’s spread legs, and after that, Hank doesn’t need to think about much of anything anymore.

 

 

 

Christmas morning, and Hank is still lazing around in bed, Connor propped up on a few extra cushions on the divan in the study, everything below the waist aching in the delicious way he’s become both accustomed to and greedier for by the day.

It had been decided earlier in the week that they would both live at Anderson Manor after the wedding, and that they would track down as many of the former staff possible and offer them an increased salary if they had not already found more suitable work elsewhere.

Doing a few last-minute calculations, he’s satisfied that due to his mother’s generous allowance and his own steadily growing income as a reliable matchmaker (even though he has not fully come into his promised inheritance yet),  Anderson Manor will finish the following season with a surplus once his negotiations with the bank have come to fruition.

Putting the financial ledgers aside for the moment, he reaches for his own personal journal of accounts related to his matchmaking business, which he normally runs out of one of Lord Kamski’s old storefronts.

_How would Hank feel if I proposed moving the business to Anderson Manor, as another source of revenue?_

The thought makes him chuckle, and he is warmed by it and the heat of the fire, as well as by the successes listed on his journal’s pages.

Using pseudonyms and abbreviations, he keeps track of who employs him, who he is seeking a match for, and the individual whom the client or prospective spouse accepts as a suitor.

Viscount C. Married. Baron Vonn Bauer. _Happily_ married. Lady of the Many Bonnets. Happily divorced, husband so glad to be rid of her he gave her his ownership of a small island in the Pacific.

Flipping to the most recent page, he smiles softly.

Client: Lord Henry. Employed by: N/A. Client accepted by: __________.

Filling in his own initials, C.S., in the last blank, feeling very much the foolish schoolgirl, he finds himself pausing over the “not applicable” part of his log.

Hank had deduced the truth, that Connor had _not_ been hired upon the late Lord Anderson’s dying request, but he had also not yet discovered the individual that had truly started the long and complicated venture to earn Hank Anderson’s heart.

Perhaps it started at a Midsummer’s Ball the year previous, when their eyes had met and a feeling like lightning striking traveled up Connor’s spine. Or later, when he experienced Hank’s close, warm presence; his tentativeness, despite his towering size.

Hank had suffered greatly, and Connor, not knowing exactly how to reach out to a near-stranger coping with such a delicate issue, had chosen the path of least resistance by appearing as someone useful for Hank’s situation.

He could’ve only hoped that it would turn into something more, something with the potential to last, but when he’d taken the plunge and put himself out there the way he’d always encouraged Hank to do, now he could do more than hope.

Still smiling, Connor draws a single line through the N/A and writes C.S. in large, neat letters.

Maybe someday he’ll tell Hank, but preferably _after_ they’ve adopted a half-dozen children and just as many dogs.

 _Speak of the devil_ , he thinks, a tiny bell jingling from the corridor as a large St. Bernard puppy wanders into the room, seeking out the warmth of the fire.

“You’re supposed to be hiding downstairs,” Connor mock-scolds, running his hands through the dog’s fur and scrunching his adorable jowls between his hands. “But it’s good you’re here. We can surprise him early, don’t you think?”

The puppy lets out a high-pitched “Boof!” in support.

“What do you think he’ll call you, huh, little pup?”

Connor’s so absorbed in talking to the puppy that he doesn’t notice Hank’s padded over from the bedroom, clad in a rumpled dressing gown and a festive Saint Nicholas hat he must have pilfered from the decorations last night.

“Sumo,” he says in greeting. “His name’s Sumo.”

“Sumo,” Connor agrees, the puppy’s tongue lolling as he gives a little doggy smile of endorsement. “I like the sound of that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I want many things out of life, and Hankcon regency AU is one of them. If anyone has even the tiniest inkling to fanart this for any reason, I heartily encourage you to do so.


End file.
